Werner Herzog on BBC's HARDtalk

Werner Herzog was recently on BBC’s HARDtalk program, and although there isn’t much new in it to people who know Herzog, he is always fun to listen to.

In her book on Kurosawa, Teruyo Nogami shared this lovely anecdote about Herzog:

Another unusual visitor was the German director Werner Herzog, whose name was then unfamiliar to Kurosawa. There was a book he wanted to give Kurosawa, said Herzog, but he hadn’t been able to find it in the book store and he had a plane to catch, so he had just dropped by to pay his respects. Then the next day, I think it was, he made a special trip to hand-deliver the book — having gone to the trouble of altering his flight reservation to do so. I believe it was a book of drawings. In any case, Kurosawa found this gesture deeply moving.

Later, in Japan, Kurosawa took the first opportunity to go see Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1981) and was overwhelmed by its tenacious energy.

I would say that Herzog is definitely one of those most interesting living filmmakers, and I’m very much looking forward to his new feature film — his first dramatic film in six years — called Queen of the Desert and starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson.

Thanks for posting this , interesting interview although as you say the questions cover mostly old ground. But I never tire of hearing Herzog speak.
For anyone interested the new BFI Blu-ray box set is fantastic with plenty of extras, short films and documentaries thrown in.
I’m sure there are more in-depth reviews that I’ve seen but this is one that I’ve found in a hurry
Box set review.

I so want to buy that box set, even if we already pretty much have all of those films as we own Anchor Bay’s two box sets from the mid-2000s that in 11 DVDs cover most of his feature films. And then we have the Australian 10 DVD set by Shock Entertainment, which collects almost all of his documentaries and shorts up until 2004. And on top of that we have some individual DVDs as well. And I haven’t even watched everything that these sets offer.

But blu-ray… and more extras… so tempting…